Kestas Petukauskas

Kestas Petukauskas (17 July 1882-16 August 1943) was a politician of early independent Lithuania after the 1918 Treaty of Versailles.

Biography
Kestas Petukauskas was born on 17 July 1882 in the icy port of Memel in the German Empire (present-day Klaipeda, Lithuania) to an ethnic Lithuanian family. He became a lawyer in 1900 after graduating from a university in his home city, and became a member of the civil administration of Memel. During World War I he served in the same post, but after Lithuania gained its independence in 1918 following the signing of a ceasefire, Petukauskas was employed in a higher role as the Governor of Klaipeda. In 1923, he was one of the leaders of the Klaipeda Revolt against General Jean Petisne's French administration and helped in securing Memelland for the Lithuanians. Petukauskas was the governor of the city until the 1939 German reoccupation of the region and the 1940 invasion of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, whereupon he was captured fleeing to Turkey through German-occupied Poland. Because he was a political opponent, Petukauskas was interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he died in 1943.